


Vile Bodies

by mydogwatson



Series: PostcardTales III [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: John's specialist subject, M/M, Marriage, love makes it all different
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-07
Updated: 2017-02-07
Packaged: 2018-09-22 17:51:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9618584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mydogwatson/pseuds/mydogwatson
Summary: A look at John Watson and his relationship to human bodies over his life.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So, folks, here is the first story of Postcard Tales III. You have said such nice things about the first two series and I hope you all enjoy these tales. There are 26 this time and I hope to post one a day. For newcomers, on my trips to London, I take a pile of Penguin Classic book cover postcards, I blindly select one each day, and then I write a johnlock story related to the title. More or less. Most of them end up longer than what is on the card. I take a picture of each one before mailing it to myself, luckily, as so far, after over a month since I started mailing one a day, not a single postcard has arrived. Anyway, enough rambling. Let me know what you think!

John Watson knew about bodies. Yes, he really did. No doubt ‘The Human Body’ could be his specialist subject on Mastermind, if the opportunity to appear on the program ever arose. Which it probably never would.

Still, he knew the subject.

The first body he could remember seeing in detail [other than his own, of course, and Harry’s, because they shared a bedroom until she turned twelve] belonged to Susie McMasters. They were six years old and playing in the woods behind her house on a warm July afternoon. He could not remember whose idea it was that they should explore the differences between boys and girls when it came to anatomy. [Although he was fairly certain that the word ‘anatomy’ was never actually used.] John briefly considered mentioning the fact that he had, in fact, seen that difference because of his sister; also, Susie had three brothers, so he was pretty sure she had seen one or more of them without their pants at least once. But neither of them mentioned that.

So in the spirit of gaining knowledge [or something], John dropped his khaki shorts and kicked them aside. He pulled the Muppets t-shirt over his head and then, more slowly, peeled off the slightly sweat-damp Batman pants. Susie followed suit, carefully taking off the yellow sundress covered with tiny blue flowers and hanging it on a branch. Amazingly [to John] her pants matched the dress and John vaguely realised that perhaps Harry was not the only [or best] example of female fashion sense.

Nothing much happened beyond the disrobing. They looked at each other for about thirty seconds and then they heard one of Susie’s brothers yelling for her. Hastily, they grabbed their clothes, pulled them back on and scarpered.

The next body John remembered seeing in much detail was that of Heather Cole. They spent a lot of time in the backseat of his mother’s old Reliant Robin that autumn. They never went all the way, but he did make a fairly detailed study of her boobs. Her generous boobs. If John had been the sort, he could have written a treatise on those breasts. The several poems he did scribble in the back of his history textbook have been lost to time, thank god.

Then came uni and for a time the list of names attached to bodies he came to know increased rather rapidly. Abby, Zach, Tina…and a few from drunken parties whose names he never really learned. He later realised [while lying on the sand and staring up at the Afghan stars] that he had not been a very nice boy sometimes.

But before those desert nights there was medical school and the human body took on a very different meaning to him. He began to understand what disease and injury could do to the human form. The indignities and ravages that time and age would inevitably visit on a body. Unlike some of his fellow students John did not faint or upchuck at the first autopsy they witnessed. He was fascinated by the look inside the body and that fascination grew even more when they moved into the operating theatre. His calling was born that day.

His stint in gynaecology was definitely educational as was the first time he performed a prostate exam. Bodies. He learned a lot.

But then John Watson went to war and all of that knowledge went by the wayside.

He learned instead about what happened to bodies torn apart by bullets and IEDs and even by the occasional machete. The signs of drug overdoses became sadly familiar.

But even at war, there were other bodies. Moments of pleasure snatched from the blood and gore and sadness. Inside a tent or a jeep. Maggie. Andrea. Bill. And he knew what the rumours were saying about him and Sholto, but that was ridiculous. The Major was above all of that.

When he came back to London, broken [and broke], John had little interest in the bodies he saw. And anyway, none of those people saw him at all. He was invisible until the moment he walked into the lab at Barts and was seen, observed, by the odd man with the piercing grey eyes.

After his life took a turn for the better in 221B, John rather relived his uni days, going through dates like…well, like a horny uni student. Except with much less sex, although that wasn’t really his fault.

The first time he took Sherlock Holmes to bed [or Sherlock took him; that was a debate that would go on for decades] John felt as if it were the first time he was truly seeing a human body. He looked at the angles and shadows and the acres of pale, warm flesh and it was a revelation. Later, much later, he would understand what the difference was and it had nothing to do with skin or sweat or semen.

The difference was love.

Over the years, he learned every inch Sherlock’s body and he revelled in the fact that his own was equally well known to the other man. They tracked the changes that age and time and the life they led brought to flesh and bone. They noticed, but they never minded.

On the day John turned eighty, he awoke to find the soft gold of the morning sun creeping slowly across the dark navy sheets and just edging onto the tucked-up body of his still-sleeping husband.

The impossibly thick curls were all silver now and the lines in the still-thin face were more deeply etched. Sherlock had slept naked last night, as he sometimes still did, and John let his fingertips run lightly across the aging skin. Slightly flabby now on the tummy. The infamous Holmes arse remained, in John’s opinion at least, lush. The nascent curled cock [which in this state John continued to find unbearably sweet, something he had never ever told Sherlock] could always stir John in a way that was frankly rather ridiculous for a man of his age.

This body had been the centre of John’s life for so long that he could not even imagine waking and not finding Sherlock in the bed next to him. The very thought had him edging closer, then wrapping his slightly arthritic arms and legs around his husband to hold him close. To keep him.

Sherlock’s body settled into place and he sighed his contentment without awakening.

John watched the glow of the encroaching sun illuminate their entwined flesh as he waited for the day to begin.

**Author's Note:**

> Title From: Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh
> 
> By the way, some of the titles might not sound very exciting, but I hope you will give the stories a chance anyway!


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